“Honkers! There they are!” said Sonia Beeve as a large flock of Canada geese with their distinctive call flew through the fog and rain over the San Pasqual Valley just after dawn Saturday.

“There’s a woodpecker,” said Jim Beckman. “You can tell from the way they swoop when they fly.”

Beckman, vice president of the Palomar Audubon Society, was leading a team of five birders assigned to count birds in the valley east of Escondido. It was part of the annual Christmas Bird Count, a nationwide Audubon Society event that takes place between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 every year with the goal of counting every bird species in the United States.

Palomar Audubon, which is responsible for the inland North County area, had chosen Saturday for its annual Christmas count. The fact that it was raining wasn’t about to stop them.

Saturday morning there were 22 teams of birders out and about in areas that included Valley Center, Escondido, Ramona, Poway and the San Pasqual Valley. Each team member spent the morning with their heads looking to the sky and trees and recording not just different bird species but also how many of each they saw.

When several flocks of cormorants flew by, many excited team members yelled out the identification at the same time.

Included in Beckman’s team was 14-year-old Drew Beamer, who just recently has taken to birding with great enthusiasm, having spotted over 300 species this year alone.

“It’s a really nice hobby for a kid,” said his mother, Jennifer Beamer. “It keeps him out of trouble, keeps him active and gets his mind going. It’s great.”

Beckman said birding — the term “bird watching” is no longer preferred — is one of the fastest growing hobbies in the United States. “It used to be bird watching was kind of a geeky hobby but not anymore. Now it’s kind of cool. Now we’re called birders.”

Jack Friery, another member of the San Pasqual team, said he read once that a good hobby should demand patience and concentration. “This is a hobby that does exactly that,” he said. “Ultimately though, this is an excuse to be outdoors early in the morning and in a really nice place. Everything else, all the birds, is icing on the cake.”

“The best thing is getting outdoors and just enjoying the birds and their beauty,” echoed Beeve.

Beckman arrived at the San Diego Archaeological Center off state Route 78, the meeting location for the team, before sunrise. As he drove into the lot he said a large barn owl flew from an owl box in a tall tree nearby. His face lit up as he talked about the bird flying to some other nearby tree and how the owl was probably watching us now.

Later he and the team hiked high up a hill behind the San Pasqual Battlefield Museum along a muddy trail to the top of a ridge, and then walked through a wet field, always looking up with their binoculars or scopes.

All 22 of the Palomar teams worked until about noon, counting and recording. They then gathered at Kit Carson Park in Escondido to compile information.

The weather was probably going to keep the count down this year, Beckman predicted.

“Birds hunker down when it’s rainy,” he said. “They like the sun and the insects and everything that goes with a nice day. So we’re going to have some problems today finding a lot of birds. But that’s OK. That’s all part of it.”

The final count: Beckman’s team ended with 48 different species, down just slightly from recent years. All 22 teams participating in the Christmas Count combined for 151 species, “which is good considering the weather,” Beckman said.

San Diego County is home to a greater variety of bird species than any other county in the nation, according to the Audubon Society. It’s the geography, Beckman explained.

“We have the ocean, the desert, the mountains, the valley and the chaparral. Each of these locations takes different kinds of birds to populate it.”